Sunday, December 13, 2020

[Mazes & Minotaurs Actual Play] Colonists & Chimeras! Session #5

Previous installments: Session #1, Session #2, Session #3, Session #4

Meteora the Amazon
Ellipsis the Hunter
and Buff, the Warrior henchman

This was a relatively short session, as Porphyra the Lyrist's player was still sick, and we didn't want to go ahead much without her.

So, after the character group had been escorted out of the palace/nest of the Feathered Queen, they hiked down the hill. Luckily, they didn't encounter any vulture patrols or other monsters. They went back to the valley of the Magic Stag, but couldn't find neither them nor Porphyra.

Their plan was to go and circle west/north-west around the Feathered Queen's mountain, without going into the enchanted forest, because they saw a river to the north of the mountain, and thought that it might be the very river that flows by their settlement. 

However, first they had to get there. The group's mobility was partially hindered, because they were carrying the corpse of the dead warrior Guff (on one of the donkeys).

Even with all the caution, their path lay dangerously close to the edge of the enchanted forest. And soon, indeed, danger struck, as a herd of wild boars charged out at them. Ellipsis the Hunter alerted the others, and they looked for a quick way to escape, and tried to climb up some nearby rocks. Buff made it up quickly, but Ellipsis and Meteora failed to scale the rocks under pressure, and had to receive the charging boars!


During the combat, Ellipsis noticed that the boars all had golden ear- and nose rings! Quite unusual for wild animals... But also, this wasn't your normal wilderness either, but the ancestral territory of the Golden Tribe. The player characters hypothesized that the boars might be actual members of the tribe, polymorphed into boars by the Mother Superior, the stern witch leader of the lake nymphs.

After a quick and gory melee, the group managed to kill or rout the boars. Ellipsis fancied the thought of dragging a boar carcass into the forest and bleeding it there (in a previous session, the soil of the enchanted forest drank up all blood eagerly), but abandoned the idea and the group moved forth.

Nightfall caught them still out in the open, so they set up camp under an overhanging rock. Despite the rain, they managed to get a fire going, and rested for the night. 


During one of the watches, they noticed two pairs of glowing red eyes observing them... Very creepy eyes, moving in perfect unison. They roused the flames, and the creature (?) went away.

In the morning, the hunter found tracks of just one wolf-like animal in the place where the four eyes were...

They continued their journey, and managed to reach the river. From the other bank, they could hear the sound of wood-chopping! However, they decided to leave that a mystery for now (they'd learned from the Feathered Queen that there are no settlements around here, so they assumed it might be something connected to the aggressive newcomers), and moved to the west along the river, carefully staying hidden behind rows of willows. The river then took a turn towards the north, and they started to doubt whether it might be the same river as the one near the settlement (which should be to the south instead). 

Still, they decided to trace the river further north. At one point, they heard tremendous splashing, and saw the body of a large, long-necked creature disappear under the water... They blessed their luck that they opted for walking, instead of building a raft!

Night fell, and they decided to camp in the riverside grove and go south the next day.

To be continued!

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